Choices: The Crisis of Conscience of the Vietnam Generation

My name is George Watson I am 24 years old from Portland Maine It is late summer 1968 and although I have been accepted to a Ph D program at The Catholic University of America in Washington D C I am about to be drafted How did I get in this situation And what do I do now This book provides my personal account of the difficult choices that confronted the U S Vietnam War generation Faced with the dilemma of whether or not to serve in an unpopular undeclared war my generation was forced to make choices that were not in tune with those made by our parents generation The so called Greatest Generation of World War II veterans had returned to reap their deserved rewards from the GI Bill and the burgeoning post war economy They insisted that we follow in their footsteps and step up to the war demands of the nation But the times and the issues and the stakes were different My memoir portrays the realities of those choices depicting the time and values that caused the generations to clash head on I track the evolution of my value system beginning in Catholic elementary and high school through college and graduate school giving insight into the choices I faced and the decisions I made My personal confrontation with choices during a turbulent era should resonate with members of the Vietnam War generation Much has been written about the generation that struggled during the Depression and fought in World War II referred to by former NBC announcer Tom Brokaw and others as The Greatest Generation I felt compelled to write about the generation it spawned Ironically it was the progeny of the World War II survivors who would be confronted with the choice of whether to fight in an ambiguous war that was really an unfinished product of the allied victory of World War II How did we get involved in Vietnam in the first place Following the Greatest Generation s war independence movements confronted European colonialism all over the world Vietnam was bu